Description
Rabea Khan (forthcoming, n.d.), calls for the abolition of the concept, terrorism; due to the racial, gendered, and colonial structures that have shaped and informed the concept (Khan, forthcoming). This call is something I believe should be adhered to; however, this paper makes an argument for why it might be difficult, maybe impossible for states, the media, political agents and even some academics to stop using the term. This difficulty is what I hypothesise as the ‘order of humanisation.’ I argue that the term ‘terrorism’ is widely used based on an ‘order of humanisation’ constructed by Western actors.
In October 2023 the Prime minister of Israel wrote on the social media platform X, formerly known as twitter referring to Israel’s bombardment of Gaza that ‘this is a struggle between the children of light and the children of darkness, between humanity and the law of the jungle ’. This statement was made in reference to Israel’s ‘retaliation’ to Hamas’ ‘terrorist act ’ as they have called it.
The use of the term ‘terrorism’ created both a justification for the level of Israel’s offense measures and violence while delegitimising Hamas’ acts as simply a case of irrational, savage violence. The paper carries out a critical discourse analysis on how the label of terrorism is assigned. It theorises that there is an ‘order of humanisation’ wherein actors assign the label based on that order. Drawing on race and colonial literature, the paper builds the argument for the order of humanisation. The order runs from civilised/rational humans to uncivilised/irrational humans created through colonial discourse and sustained through coloniality. ‘Terrorism’ as a concept serves as humanising and dehumanising concept for actors.
